Tom Roper

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Tom Roper became involved in Student Action for Aborigines in
the mid 1960s when the Freedom Ride was being planned as he
explained in this extract from an interview in 1997. He joined
Abschol when he was a student at the University of Sydney and began
work on broadening the perspective, while still continuing to raise
funds for scholarships. Along with Tony Lawson, Robert Oke and
others, Roper was responsible for Abschol's transformation from a
National Union of Australian University students scholarship scheme
for Aboriginal students to a well-organised national pressure
group.

Well, it really started more with Student Action for Aborigines
(SAFA), which was set up, I think, in 1964 by people like Charlie
Perkins and others at Sydney University. And I got involved in
that. While I wasn't actually on the Freedom Ride (because I needed
to stay in Sydney and actually earn money so I could go to
university over the next year) I was involved on the outskirts of
that, not as a kind of major player. Following that, in the
following year, a number of us decided, as well as our involvement
in SAFA, we should be involved in the national student
organisation, which was Abschol, and we became members of Abschol,
and started increasing its involvement, at Sydney initially, and
then in the other New South Wales campuses. We in fact set up a New
South Wales Abschol organisation. Abschol, traditionally, had been
a fairly conservative organisation, mainly concerned with raising
funds for scholarships. And I suppose firstly we altered that
perspective, while not forgetting the scholarships part, in New
South Wales and then that became very much the same nationally. And
I was, I suppose you could say, fairly heavily involved in that. By
that time we also had very strong support from people in Victoria
as well, like Colin Benjamin and Rob Oke and others, to make
Abschol a far broader organisation than traditionally it had
been.

Sue: So, SAFA, Student Action for Aborigines, do you see that as
having been significant in politicising Abschol or getting more
students involved?

Tom: Two things: Firstly in highlighting issues of Aboriginal
rights which had been discussed but not highlighted, and secondly
providing a reason for firstly a significant number of New South
Wales students to get involved, but then other students as well. I
mean SAFA wasn't just involved in the one Freedom Ride, and that
was the end of it. It was also involved in looking at the situation
in a number of New South Wales country towns. I can remember two of
us going out to Wellington to look at the situation there which was
fairly grim, and also being involved in demonstrations in, it must
have been the '65 or '66 New South Wales state election, where we
mounted a vigil outside both party headquarters for the hundred
hours before the election again to generate publicity and attention
to what was, at that stage, not occurring in New South Wales.

During Tom's presidency an effective national structure was
developed with active committees in all Australian universities.
Abschol developed during these years as an organisation committed
to improving educational opportunities for Aboriginal students,
while taking on a broader political role, such as giving practical
and financial support to the Gurindji people in establishing
themselves at Wattie Creek.

Well there was a lot of on-campus activity in that one of the
things we did that had been going on for some years at Sydney had
been the organisation of an annual appeal, the funds from which
went into the Scholarship Fund, which was based down in Melbourne,
and that occurred right through the country on all of the campuses.
And that got a variety of people involved. But as well, because of
the activity of SAFA and then of Abschol itself, quite a number of
students got involved either in the political or the fundraising or
also the tutoring part. We had tutoring schemes being run, based on
American models in quite a number of areas, as well using students
as volunteer tutors for young Aboriginal people. So there were a
variety of roles in which people became involved, and quite
significant numbers of people became interested. I can remember
having about a thousand students along to a rally, this was a
couple years later at the University of Queensland, to hear people
discuss the Queensland situation and Queensland legislation. So
there was a lot of interest, and there was a general ferment of
concern about the state of the world and so it wasn't competition
between Vietnam or Aboriginal matters or other issues either. There
was a general concern that things needed to be changed.

He rose to the position of National Director of Abschol during a
period of great change, from cooperation and consensus marked by
the passage of the 1967 Referendum to division and dissent when the
Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait
Islanders (FCAATSI) split in 1970.

Tom: Well I think that FCAATSI was very important in the
campaign for the '67 Referendum. And I mean we tend to forget the
importance of that. No government has since been able to say 'we
don't have responsibilities'. And I can remember even discussions
we had at ministerial council meetings, when I was Minister for
Aboriginal Affairs, the Commonwealth would say 'well that's a state
responsibility' and I was able to say to Gerry [Hand] 'Well that's
not why we ran around the country in 1967 so you can say that. The
Australian people clearly gave you a responsibility'. So I think
that was very important, I think also very important was the
encouragement it gave to the commencement of the land rights
movement. Also very important, as I mentioned before, was a
committee on labour relations activity, which produced very good
reports.

Sue: The one Shirley Andrews and Barry Christophers ran?

Tom: Yes. If that kind of material hadn't been produced, a lot
of the argument about equal pay, equal wages and equal conditions
would never have got off the ground. So there are a variety of ways
in which it was important, but the fact that it was also a national
conference where people could go and learn how to speak in a kind
of turbulent atmosphere didn't do any of the people who were
important in the '70s any harm at all.

Sue: It's always occurred to me that in fact that 90.77% of
Australians who voted for the referendum, if they'd known perhaps
that that was going to lead to the struggle for land rights, would
we have had a 90.77% vote?

Tom: There was certainly those who argued against it, but they
didn't get an audience. And I think the majority of Australians,
despite the best efforts of Pauline Hanson, still do not believe
that Aboriginal people have equality in the country. Now all kinds
of reasons are given for that, but nonetheless that's a strong
belief, and again there is no question that the Commonwealth has
the major responsibility. You can argue that the Commonwealth's not
doing enough, or you can argue that it's doing too much. But the
argument whether the Commonwealth should be involved died in 1967,
and that's, I think a lasting tribute to, I mean not just to
FCAATSI, but people like those out at the Aborigines Advancement
League who worked hard in Victoria, to make that occur, or the
people involved in Sydney, or Joe [McGinness] up in the North. I
mean, a whole lot of people played a part in that, and played a
part in subsequent events as well. The students just kind of came
in at a useful time with a few resources.

Sue: And I think this is a difficult question I suppose, but of
course that referendum gave the Commonwealth responsibility for
making special laws for Aboriginal people, and allowed Aboriginal
people to be counted in the census, but what did it really mean,
what do you think it really meant? Why did so many people vote
'yes'? Was it just that or was there something underlying that?

Tom: I think the reason it passed so clearly was it seems so
ludicrous that the Commonwealth Parliament could pass laws about
almost anything, except about Aboriginal people. I mean it didn't
give the total control of Aboriginal affairs to the Commonwealth.
What it did was allow the Commonwealth to have a say and of course
if there is a Commonwealth and a state law, the Commonwealth has
precedence, I was very much involved in that. I talked to thousands
of people during the course of the first few months of 1967, and
you could engage people in discussions, and they would agree that
it was crazy that the Commonwealth could pass laws about anyone
unless they were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. And I think
that was one of the reasons it got such a huge support. Of course
it got much more support proportionately in Melbourne than it got
on the north coast of New South Wales, where, as we all know, there
were some very vigorous racist views. I mean I can remember when
the fellow that owned the Bowraville picture theatres said to
Charlie Perkins, 'I don't care if you're the Prime Minister of
Australia, you're still not sitting in the white seats', or words
to that effect.

That was on that Freedom Ride where a number of barriers were
broken. You used to come up against those. I can remember being
involved - there was a group of students were at a work camp in
Port Augusta in South Australia, and I was over there and in fact
the Aboriginal person who was the foreman for the students was the
one who was making sure the work they did stood up. We all went
down to the Port Augusta picture theatre, and we just asked for
five or six, or whatever the number of tickets were, and the
Aboriginal foreman was told no, that he'd have to sit down the
front. And we had an immediate kind of blue, and effectively broke
the barrier then and there. I mean that was fairly common in a lot
of towns in Australia: like Gnowangerup using its labour market
funds to fix the white part up, while the Aboriginal part was
terrible. I mean there are still some terrible, absolutely
appalling situations, but at least now the argument is about
whether the Commonwealth is doing enough not whether it should be
doing anything at all.

Tom was interested both in how to provide educational
opportunities for Aboriginal students and in the broader political
questions of the day. After Labor formed government nationally, he
worked as a research officer in Aboriginal education for Gordon
Bryant in 1973 and then went on to a career in the Victorian
parliament as a Labor MLA. He held portfolios in Aboriginal Affairs
and Health.

Tom: It was very much an interim thing. I had been preselected
for the seat at Brunswick West [Victorian state seat], and I was
actually working as a senior tutor out in the Education Faculty at
Latrobe, and Gordon [Bryant] contacted me and asked me if I'd be
prepared to work with him and the department [of Aboriginal
Affairs]. It was very clear that it was with both, and I said yes,
I'd be happy to do that, and I did that, not full time, because I
had responsibilities down at Latrobe [University], and also I was
running for a seat in Parliament. But I put as much time in it as I
could.

Sue: Looks full time when you read the record.

Tom: I got around to a lot. We started, for instance, an
Aboriginal education program. For the first time, we got the
Commonwealth to actually look at what was occurring and there was a
lot occurring in South Australia; there was nothing occurring in
New South Wales; very little occurring in Western Australia. We
were able, in the space of about six months, to gee up a whole lot
of people and programs. We were able to introduce the idea of
bilingual education, which I'd seen operating very effectively in
the Navaho, on the Navaho reservation, in America a couple of years
before. We were able to get rid of the Aboriginal education branch
in the Northern Territory. And I've still got the physical
education pamphlets of that branch that were being used in 1970-71:
things called 'Throw Well' for people learning to throw a javelin,
a shot-put; no mention of a boomerang or a spear. And this is in
material prepared for and used in the Aboriginal education area in
the Northern Territory. We were able to get rid of that. The last
thing I was able to do, I had actually already been elected to
[Victorian] Parliament but I had to finish off a piece of work. I
ran, with the help of the Roberts, a special meeting for Aboriginal
elders in the Northern Territory: brought them all in to tell us -
and it was a great eye opener for the people who had been running
Aboriginal education up there - what they wanted for their
children. And one of the things that came up there was the problems
that were caused by taking people away from home in the crucial
years of their life, to go to places like Kormilda [College in
Darwin]. Unfortunately Kormilda had gone too far at that stage to
be stopped. It already had all the approvals. But we were able to
bring new people and ideas in. I then went into the Victorian
Parliament and in fact it was only quite recently I went back to
Darwin for the first time since then. But that was a very exciting
time in that the administrative structure wasn't there which is the
reason that administrative errors occurred.

Since leaving politics Tom has moved to New York where he works
in environmental policy at all levels. He is a Project Director of
the Global Sustainable Energy Islands Initiative.

Source: The extracts on this page are from an
interview with Tom Roper conducted by Sue Taffe on 11 November
1996